IPierian turns its stem cell technology on Alzheimer's, antibody drugs

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IPierian turns its stem cell technology on Alzheimer's, antibody drugs
San Francisco Business Times by Ron Leuty, Reporter
Date: Monday, May 21, 2012


After fits and starts, iPierian Inc. will focus on developing monoclonal antibodies targeting Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.

The South San Francisco stem cell technology and drug development company -- whose top-drawer investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers , Google Ventures and venture groups tied to GlaxoSmithKline and Biogen Idec -- said Monday that its antibody drugs will zero in on tau protein and the Complement pathway.

Tau is a suspect in spreading fiber tangles associated with Alzheimer’s, while excess activity in the Complement pathway has been linked with inflammation and Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease.

IPierian’s goal over the next six months is to identify a suite of antibodies for the tau and Complement programs, said CEO Nancy Stagliano, and to raise another round of financing by the end of the year.

Ultimately, iPierian is aiming to begin a human trial with one of those potential drugs in 2014, Stagliano said.

Stagliano would not disclose how much iPierian, which has 30 employees, would seek in a new financing round.

IPierian also said Monday that it has hired Pamela Conley as vice president of research. Conley most recently was vice president of research biology at South San Francisco’s Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc. and, before that, director in biology at Millennium Pharmaceuticals.

IPierian’s public move forward in the drug-development space, rather than licensing its stem cell technology to other drug developers, comes nearly nine months after Stagliano was brought on board. Her hiring capped a tumultuous 2011 for a company that showed promise based on its high-profile backers, its scientific founders -- three researchers from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute -- and alliances with the likes of induced pluripotent stem cells pioneer Shinya Yamanaka.

Yamanaka is a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco as well as a professor at Kyoto University in Japan.

The company, however, has struggled with where to go with its knowledge and cash. The resulting internal fight led to the departure of a handful of executives and board members as iPierian continued to burn cash.
But now, Stagliano said, iPieiran’s direction is clear.

“We are not licensing the technology,” Stagliano said. “That was considered, but the real value is in the technology enabling our own pipeline. That’s the way we are using it.”

IPierian’s antibody drugs won’t use induced pluripotent stem cells -- or IPS cells -- mature stem cells that can be manipulated in the lab to act like embryonic stem cells and can be coaxed to form various types of cells. But Stagliano said iPierian’s IPS technology will help the company more effectively find drug targets, especially since live brain cells are tough to come by.

In fact, Stagliano said, IPS cells “told us about Tau and said it was outside the cell.”

Tau has long been thought of as a protein that works inside a cell, so experimental Alzheimer’s drugs have concentrated on getting inside the cell, too. Recently, however, research on tau has shown that it gets outside the cell and may spread like a virus.

Antibodies then are a logical choice to attack Alzheimer’s, Stagliano said, since they can selectively target the surface of a cell or the site where Tau is being secreted by the cell.

IPierian believes that an antibody drug targeting tau also could attack frontotemporal dementia (the subject of a New York Times front-page story earlier this month) and progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurodegenerative disease that affects cognition – things like attention, memory, language and problem solving -- as well as eye movements and posture.